This article was originally published by Ethan Huff at Natual News.
Israel’s assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader responsible for peace negotiations in Gaza, has triggered Iran into threatening a full-scale response from the “entire Resistance Axis.”
After condemning the July 31 killing of Haniyeh, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spewed a mouthful at Israel, calling it a “criminal, murderous, and terrorist Zionist gang” that “disregard[s] international rules and regulations (and) spares no criminal action to cover up its humiliating defeats in the nine-month war in Gaza.”
Israel’s actions, the IRGC continued in a statement, have “resulted in the massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinian women, men, and children.”
The threatening part of the IRGC’s statement came next as Iran promised to meet “this crime by the Zionist regime … with a severe and painful response from the powerful and grand Resistance Axis, especially the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The IRGC also said that “the Martyr of Jerusalem” will bless Haniyeh’s efforts “in defending the cause and rights of the Palestinian nation.”
Following Haniyeh’s death, Tehran announced a three-day period of mourning.
(Related: Iran continues to warn Israel that if it does not back off, a larger attack will come when they least expect it.)
Tensions between Israel and Iran reach breaking point
Haniyeh’s death occurred just a few hours after Israel conducted an airstrike on a residential building in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital city. That attack in and of itself triggered a serious escalation that only worsened after Haniyeh was targeted as well.
The residential building attack resulted in three civilians, a woman, and two children, dying. Another 70 people were injured. The target in that attack was Fuad Shukr, a top military advisor to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and director of Hezbollah’s military operations.
Shukr’s body
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at SHTF Plan